Billionaire Elon Musk’s AI and aerospace giant SpaceX has banned investors from Hong Kong and mainland China from buying its shares as it goes public on Friday – a rarely seen restriction that shows just how geopolitically sensitive the world’s tangled financial markets have grown. But Chinese investors seem all too willing to make risky investments in cryptocurrencies allegedly backed by US companies to avoid letting the initial public offering (IPO) of the century pass them by.

At the start of the war in Ukraine, the Russian capture of Kinburn Spit – a narrow piece of land that holds the key to several Ukrainian ports – was hailed as one of Moscow’s most significant victories on the southern front. From there, Russia could launch attacks on the Ukrainian mainland, and use it as a springboard should it make an attempt to take Odesa. Now, Russian forces appear to have pulled back from the once so-strategic spit. What is going on?